


Eclipse

by DaisyIfYouHave



Series: Post-WM Overwatch Universe [5]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Mostly a mercy fic but lots of gay feelings for pharah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 10:14:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11872209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyIfYouHave/pseuds/DaisyIfYouHave
Summary: There is light, there is darkness, there is light





	Eclipse

**20%**

 

It was nothing, at first. Just a small bite out of the sun, barely cutting off its light. Most people would barely notice it, if they didn’t know that they were meant to be looking.

  _“The United Nations has us under watch, Dr. Ziegler.” Jack looked up at her with a note of desperation in his eyes. “There’s a bunch of trumped-up charges of human rights offenses, or something. I don’t even know what they’re talking about, I don’t know if they do either.”_

 I don’t know how trumped-up I think those charges are. _She thought over her time in Overwatch, her stomach twisting at the compromises she had made with herself, the way she was not sure what pursuing justice meant any more._

  _Mercy looked over to where Reyes’ desk used to be, sharing an oversize office with Morrison. They had been so close. It was painful to see them now, barely speaking, and when they did, it came in rushed and dark tones._  

 _“Well,” Tracer chirped up behind her, “if there’s nothing to find--”_  

 _“Can it, Tracer. Your goddamn father is the reason this happened in the first place!” Jack’s anger raged, and Mercy puzzled at it. Things must be so much worse than they seemed, if Jack sacrificed his cool demeanor, his idea of what it meant to be a leader, to snap at a new recruit who had done nothing but be injured in the line of duty._  

 _Tracer’s eyes narrowed, hurt and shame and anger and defensiveness mixing in her dark brown eyes into a single bright emotion. “Might ‘ave done us all a bit of good if someone had bothered to tell ‘im what tin the bloody ‘ell ‘appened to me, right?!”_  

_“You’re out of line, Oxton!”_

  _“Oh what the ‘ell else is new and exciting in the world?!”_

  _“Stop, please!”_

_They both turned to Mercy, surprised by the pain in her voice, and the room darkened just a bit more._

 

**60%**

 Dim. She might have thought it was just cloudy, but for the lack of patchwork, no bright spots on the grass where the clouds parted, just a single greying of the world in the quieting light. 

 _“Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes, founding members of Overwatch were killed Sunday in an explosion--”_  

 _Mercy flipped off the TV. It did them no good to hear what they had known, and known again, and to never let it leave their minds. The heaviness in her chest grew darker, sitting as smog over the valley, crushing and suffocating._  

 _They all stared grimly at each other, the final field agents of a struggling agency that barely hung onto relevance._  

 _Tracer pushed out her chair, and stood up, wiping away the tears from her eyes._  

_“We’ll carry on,” She spoke confidently, and every head turned to watch her, “for the both of them. For what they meant it to be. We’ll do it proper.”_

  _It did not feel that way, sitting in a quiet room with only the sound of their losses between them, a sniffle in the silence, a gruff chin held firm against the pain, the gentle twisting fidget of people longing to escape the trap of their own suffering._  

_The brass had said little. Overwatch was an intricate net, they had said, but nets did not just catch when you fell--they snared, too, and a trap you set for another pay catch your own leg._

  _Mercy had felt herself struggling against it, more._

  _“We’ll do it!” Tracer banged her hands against the table, “we will!”_  

_She believed it, her eyes told Mercy all she needed to know, and Mercy wondered if she could not see the dimming of the sky or if she simply thought she could fight back the darkness with the strength of her own belief._

 

**80%**

 It was strange now, a darkness that seemed unnatural, no wind or cloud to support its existence, as if a haze had fallen over all the world, and Mercy reached out her hand. 

 _“Winston!” Mercy called to him down the hallway, moving quickly to catch up. These last few weeks had been difficult, but there had been a certain joy in Mercy getting to work with him, in getting a second chance in all the ways she felt she had failed Tracer the first time, before she knew her, before she cared for her beyond her general care for all of humanity._  

 _Winston turned to face her, a look of anger and despair on his face._  

 _“Oh,” She gently touched his elbow, “Is something wrong? Is Lena not doing so well, I thought--”_  

_“I handed in my resignation. I’m taking Lena home.” He looked at her, apologetic, and then looked at the ground, unable to meet her gaze._

  _“Home?”_  

_“I bought an old warehouse in London, to have it made for me, and--I was going to surprise Lena, she’s always wanted me to have a place there, but now--now we’re just going to go. It’s not finished, but it’s enough.”_

  _Mercy shook her head. Her team, her friends, dropping off one by one, and the growing loneliness in her soul rose in waves she had not yet felt since those lonely days of medical school._

  _“I--”_

  _“Angela, they were going to send her away,” He could not look at her, still, and his voice dripped with pain. “To some facility. They don’t think she’ll get better. They won’t give her time.”_  

They wouldn’t do that. She was disabled in the line of duty. This happened in the line of duty. She’s done nothing but serve. 

_But Winston’s face did not lie._

 The green of the grass turned grey in the shadow of the moon, pinks and oranges at the edges, as if the sun were setting instead of being swallowed.

 

 **Totality**  

_Black. Just black. There were stars, some said, but Mercy could not see them, could not find the tiny points of light against the darkness that had fallen over everything._

  _“Dr. Ziegler.” The woman looked at her sternly, as if she were disciplining a toddler. “What do you have to say of Overwatch’s conduct in the past 30 years? Of their methods?”_  

I want to say that I do not know what to say. I want to say we thought we were doing good. I want to say the your foot can be so easily snared, and I want to say that I understand why I am here. 

 _“The methods that were being used are not always the best. Overwatch was successful where others have been failing.” She cleared her throat. ‘They were allowed until it was peaceful and too hard to let them do it.”_  

I want to say I have the misfortune of surviving, of being the one to answer, of being the one left.

  _“And, Dr. Ziegler, what do you think about Overwatch now?”_  

 _Mercy looked over the assembly, at all the eyes peering at her, and she imagined all the people who might be in the audience, looking on her in shame. Her parents, who taught her justice, justice shall you pursue. Yael, who told her they were the same. Ana, who told her the field would give her the chance to live her values. All the children of the world who had trusted her and all she tried to do. They looked on her and they found her wanting. They looked on her and they did not see righteousness._  

I want to say Overwatch should be shut down. I want to say we should have been shut down years ago. 

 _“I think we did what we thought was the best.”_  

She reached out in the dark, and for a moment, there was only nothing, and the cool of the grass beneath her hand.

 

 **80%**  

In the dark, on the grass, the false night began to again turn grey, and it seemed the world was new born under Mercy’s eyes, as a warm hand slipped around hers. 

Respected Dr. Ziegler, 

 _It felt nice, to be respected. To feel she was worthy of respect. The years after Overwatch were disbanded had been long and painful, and oh so lonely. Winston and Tracer wrote, from time to time, though Tracer forgot sometimes that she had meant to, and her letters began with nothing but apologies._  

 _It had been Mercy’s fault, too, their growing apart. Mercy had been found not guilty of any crime in Overwatch, but the shame stuck with her,the idea that perhaps she had deserved to be charged._  

 _But Harvard found her useful, and Harvard wanted her to teach, and in teaching she could find the blood to mark her doorway, to have the shame of her past pass her over, and to move forward to something new._  

 _The sense of possibility was nerve wracking in itself._  

 _She sighed in a determined huff and looked in the mirror. Her hair was a mess, and there was a glob of praline pecan ice cream on her kitten t-shirt, with its sunglassed cat declaring that you had to be kitten her. She hardly looked like a professor of Harvard medicine._  

 _But maybe, she thought, it was time to stop hiding in the shadows. Maybe it was time to start being useful, time to reclaim what a good thing a Ziegler could be. To make her family proud. And maybe that started with the first step._  

 _She went to the Banana Republic website. Pencil skirt and new blouse might be more appropriate for her first day._  

_Maybe there would be her future, waiting in a city thousands of miles away._

 She gripped back tightly as the greys brightened, and color began to sweep over the land.

 

**60%**

 Light began to crawl over the grass and the trees again, and Mercy began to see herself in the bright of the sun, the grey crawling off of her, the gold of her hair learning to shine again. 

 _She was supposed to be grading papers. She was supposed to be meeting with a student. She was supposed to be doing a dozen other things, but nothing mattered so much as the woman in front of her right now. It was a joy to see Tracer again. It was delightful to know WInston was so close. This woman was something else entirely, a word she did not know in any of the four languages she spoke._  

_“Fareeha, this is Angela Ziegler. Ang, this is Fareeha Amari. Looked me up on account of my work with the Slipstream. We’ve been working together on a Helix project or two.”_

_Mercy extended her hand, mouth open slightly. “I imagine it is pronounced closer to, Fareeha.” It poured off her tongue delicately as her outstretched hand was met._

_Tracer rolled her eyes and picked up a French fry._

_Her eyebrow arched in appreciation, and Mercy longed to rest in the dark shadows of her eyes. “You speak Arabic?”_

_“Oh no,” Mercy gave a girlish giggle, and Tracer’s face turned to a boyish grin as she watched Mercy’s face, “But it is fascinating, and so beautiful, some of the greatest poets of history wrote in Arabic, ‘_ when I sink my eye into your eyes, I catch a glimpse of a deep dawn, and I see ancient yesterday,” _She suddenly realized she was still holding Pharah’s hand, and let go, stopping herself._

_Tracer smiled smugly and tucker hands underneath her chin. “She says this sort of thing to me all the time.”_

She looked at her hand, safely anchored by her beloved, as the light grew bright once more.

 

**20%**

It was nothing, now. Just a small bite out of the sun, barely cutting off its light. Most people would barely notice it, if they didn’t know that they were meant to be looking. 

_Pharah generally said exactly what she meant, and Mercy loved that about her. Sometimes she did not say things that she meant to say, but that was a problem to be solved later, and Mercy at least found herself glad that every word that did come from Pharah’s lips was at least true, and there was an assurance that came from that._

  _Which was why she was so shocked, on this cool morning, fall steadily turning to winter._

  _“I do not wish to be casual.”_  

 _As the world around them died, they were blooming oh so brightly._  

 _Mercy looked at her, wondering if this was all a cruel joke, if Pharah had finally decided to be cavalier with her feelings, to tease her and the depth she had. Someone like Pharah could never want someone like her, not like this._  

_And yet, hadn’t she just last night told Mercy she loved her? That she would never be a poet, but she would try to show Mercy every day?_

  _Mercy was so lost in her thoughts, that she quite forgot she had left Pharah without an answer, sitting in her bed in her white undershirt, the dark black of her hair set against it like a glorious watercolor line, the finest art Mercy knew._

  _“I understand if you have other...engagements. If you do not want to--”_  

_Mercy nearly leapt across the bed, and kissed her deeply, drawing deep from her as if she could make the two of them one._

_She pulled away from Pharah gracelessly and shook her head. “I was never being casual.”_

_Pharah kissed her again, her hands bringing the warmth of the sun, burning with the heat of life, across her back._

 

Light 

The sun was bright, shining down on everything, lighting the green of the grass and the yellows of the bushes of flowers, bringing all of the land to life, and Mercy with it. 

_There was nothing to be nervous about, and yet, she was. Standing in front of the mirror, her dress delicate and lace and oh so beautiful, imagining the chuppah covered in flowers that Pharah had proudly constructed for her, because she remembered that Mercy had said, once, when they had attended a wedding together, that she had wanted one. Because Pharah was the kind of woman who remembered._

_She was nervous, but the nervousness of getting on a roller coaster, the excitement for all that was to come, the knowing that she was safe, at the end of the day._

_She would walk in front of all of their friends, and all of the family they had yet found, and Pharah would take her hand, beautiful and perfect in her blue suit, and they would pledge to be together, and it was such a beautiful vision that Mercy scarcely felt it belonged to her, the it might just be something in the mist, far off, even now._

_Pharah might shed a tear when she walked down the aisle, and everyone would smile, knowing her to be so strong, but capable of such tenderness._

_Everyone expected Mercy would sob, including Mercy herself, and she delicately touched at the handkerchiefs she had tucked within the edge of her bouquet. She had been sure to ask for waterproof makeup._

_There was a knock, too hard and too loud and just right, at her door._

_“Are you ready?” Reinhardt’s voice boomed reassuringly as he opened the door._

_“I am the most ready I have been for anything in my life.”_

“It is strange, how everyone has,” Pharah gestured at the crowd, “whipped up over something that lasted less than an hour.” 

Mercy leaned on Pharah’s shoulder. “Are you not happy we were coming here to see?” 

Pharah drew her arm around her. “I am happy to go anywhere you are. It was only an observation. The sun always comes back, you know.”

 The light of the sun beaming on Mercy with all of its strength, safely held in the rich and safe darkness of Pharah’s eyes, not the cold of a shadow but the warmth of the earth, nurturing and good, and Mercy let herself be held in them. 

“Yes. I am so happy it does.”


End file.
